How to keep your brain young

One of the great questions you will face as you grow older is this: will your brain go the distance? Will your physical health remain strong, but your brain function fail to keep up? Your brain is such a precious organ. It governs everything you do and everything you think. It’s important to look after it throughout your entire life.

Decades of talking to patients about their concerns have shown me many people’s greatest fear as they get older is the possibility of losing their intellectual capacity, and the implications that might have for their quality of life, independence and autonomy.

In medical practice we do what we can to identify risk factors so we can predict and prevent disease or intervene at an early stage before little can be done to reverse or cure it. In neurology, the ‘holy grail’ is the search for